IS CANADA BECOMING A COPYCAT PAKISTAN ?

Gurpreet Singh is an Indian Sikh living in Amritsar and he says : We have suffered a lot. You can go back to the Indian National Movement and I distinctly remember the pain encumbered on us when the British soldiers brutally killed 329 people and injured thousands in April 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, many of whom were women and children. After partition of India a good of Punjab went to Pakistan and the Sikhs remained a combative lot – life made cruel encounters off them; literacy was low and young Sikhs wavered towards gang robbery, theft, hooliganism – which at a later stage took the horrible shape of terrorism and militancy.

It was not until June 1984 when Sikh militancy was challenged by Indian State, when the Army attacked Golden Temple to flush out the miscreants, when Operation Bluestar was activated killing thousands of civilians trapped inside the gurudwara, apart from the militants.

There is an excellent book An Uncommon Road : How Canadian Sikhs Struggled Out of the Fringes and Into the Mainstream – by Gian Singh Sandhu where he lists out the initial days when Sikhs ventured into Canada for employment somewhat guided by an unknown sense of hatred towards India and reciprocated by Canada playing an amazingly warm host. Sikh settlements grew in Canada by leaps and bounds in those times.

Gian Singh has been usually candid through the book when he writes : After the massacre at the Golden Temple, I, like the rest of the 20 million Sikhs worldwide, was outraged. I am not an inherently angry or emotional person; I prefer to think of myself as rational (perhaps to a fault). My default manner is to be calm, sometimes to the point of appearing detached. I am more likely to focus on solutions than to sit and brood over the problem. As an advocate of our community, a sort of innate level-headedness has served me well. As a storyteller, though, I may leave you wanting to look elsewhere for a more emotional narrator who wears his angst on his sleeve.

Punjabi Sikhs became a prominent ethnic group within the workforce in British Columbia almost immediately after initial arrival in Canada. The early settlers in 1905 built the first Gurudwara (Sikh temple) in Canada and North America. And they never looked back.

After the trouble in Golden Temple, was the Sikh angst real and pounding (?). Yes. To a fault !  Operation Bluestar was sloppy and in order to eliminate one Sikh militant, who was hiding inside the temple (picture below), India made enemies with the entire Sikh community.

On October 31, 1984, barely four months after the Golden Temple was attacked, Sikhs assassinated the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. She was murdered by her own security guards.

Angst swelled up into irrational demands.

Sikhs started demanding a separate State for them. The demand for Khalistan peaked in India during those times but armed insurgency was swiftly crushed by Delhi. In present times even calls for Khalistan are still loud among some in the Sikh diaspora in countries such as Canada, Australia and the UK. Delhi has reacted sharply to demonstrations for and referendums on Khalistan by Sikh activists in these countries. It goes without saying that there are many Sikhs in India passionate about their country !!

 Then, what is unique to Canada ?

Canada is averse to lose Sikh sympathy at any cost, Sikhs there feel sheltered. But if you go back in time, you will realise that relations between India and Canada have survived previous strains - Ottawa reacted sharply to Indian nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998; India expressed its disappointment in 2005 after two Canadian Sikhs accused of a deadly Air India bombing were acquitted. 

In 1985 Air India flight 182 was bombed en route from Toronto to Delhi killing 329 people. It is believed that on board flight 182 were members of a Khalistan group called the Babbar Khalsa (banned in Europe and the USA) and other related groups who were at the time agitating for separate Sikh state.

India and Canada have mostly been on good terms, except for the Khalistan issue !! They are both

Commonwealth countries and members of the G20 group of leading world economies. Canada, which wants a bigger footprint in Asia, sees India as a counterweight to China.

Canada. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch ! Problems galore ahead.

It is not just geopolitics, the countries also have strong trade links. India was Canada's 10th largest trading partner in 2022, with bilateral trade in goods at USD 11.9 billion that year, up 56% from the previous year. They were very close to signing that trade agreement, now on the backburner.

What is the reason of the backburner(?). H. S. Nijjar. Canadian police are hot on the heels of the two men believed to be responsible for the fatal shooting of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the British Columbia province in June 2023.

And now, fingers are pointing at us. Ties between India and Canada came under severe strain following Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's allegations in September of a potential involvement of Indian agents in the killing of separatist Nijjar outside a gurdwara in Surrey city on June 18.

India had designated Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020 and has rejected Mr. Trudeau's allegations as absurd and motivated.

Why Canada is so amenable to Khalistan supporters(?). Canada is home to world’s largest Sikh population outside India, who number nearly 770,000 people, or 2.1% of the country’s population. In Trudeau Canadian Sikhs found a person companionable and comradely to a point finding them seats in national cabinet. Ottawa is now bound by that politics. A selfish blunder I suppose !!

Signs of a weak global leader. Tensions among Indian and Canadian officials first simmered in 2015, when Trudeau came to power and appointed four Sikh ministers to his then 30-member cabinet. In the past, Indian diplomats had raised issues over Sikh Canadians who express support for the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separatist Sikh homeland in India.

Anti India reactions continue. Anti India slogans abounded, many temples were vandalised in 2022 with graffiti that read death to India in Urdu and Khalistan, Sikh Canadians had organised local referendums over Sikh independence from India. In 2018, Trudeau’s trip to India was criticized when his delegation, which included a Sikh contingent, met Jaswal Atwal, a Sikh man convicted of attempted murder of a visiting Indian cabinet minister.

Can Canada live without India(?). No with a capital N. Justin Trudeau saw India as a critical partner under its Indo-Pacific strategy, given the country’s growing economic and demographic importance in the region. As recently as in May, both sided appeared optimistic that a trade agreement on automobile, agriculture and information technology would be signed. It never happened because of a very angry India.

(Please visit www.cheekychatur.com and read the article India’s Demographic Sweet Spot for details).

But it appears that Canada does not care, why (?). One of the reasons being USA always plays big brother to Ottawa. USA’s trade with Canada in 2022 totalled an estimated USD 909 billion. Canada is the largest purchaser of US goods exports accounting for 17.3 % of total US goods exports !

Now India is worried(!). Khalistan extremism is growing in Canada with friendly assistance from Islamabad, London, USA and other European nations. Judgement days lie ahead folks ! It sure does.

Picture above shows pro-khalistan flags seen at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Former Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh claimed (hear from the horse’s mouth !!) that the extremism in Punjab is backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Khalistani sympathisers in Canada, UK and Italy to name a few.

Ah, the Dorian faces. Well, now the Dorian faces of Canada, USA and UK have been exposed they would surely face our PM in global forums - he would be asking difficult questions to these Dorians what they have done to make India feel friendly. They would rather leave India minding their own business !!

Disclaimer : The name Gurpreet Singh is imaginary and does not resemble any person(s) dead or alive.